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Microsoft Surprisingly Admits That ALL Xbox 360s Are Defective

by Max Brenn 11:11, July 13th 2007

Last week’s announcement of an extended, three years warranty for Xbox 360 was just the beginning of Microsoft’s mea culpa saga: recently, Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Redmond allegedly admitted that every console sold out there is suffering from design flaws that could eventually lead to the red ring of death.

Australian site CRN reports that Microsoft’s official informed financial analysts during a conference call of the design flaws that affect the Xbox 360, which have determined the high return rate. Apparently, all of the 11.6 million consoles reportedly sold by the end of June have this undisclosed issue, but Microsoft has taken the necessary steps to fix it.

"In the past couple of months we started to see significant increases in repair requests and call requests and significant attention from people," he said.

Despite keeping quiet about the design flaw that determined a return rate of up to 33%, Microsoft confirmed that consoles that are still in stock will be upgraded soon and that all customers with red-ring-of-death problems are entitles to free repairs and shipping, for the entire three-year warranty period. Microsoft estimated that the costs for this program will reach $1.15 billion.

A man who has had 8 consoles fail so far explains what he believes the issue with the hardware is.

"... the problem isn’t just with launch units. Of the 8 I’ve had so far, only 2 were manufactured in the first three months of launch. The last one I had red-ring on me was manufactured in November of ‘06 - a full year after launch.

The problem is that the cooling design of the 360 doesn’t hold up. The cooling of the CPU was well done, with a heat pipe to draw the heat away from the chip (and accordingly, away from the mainboard). The problem is that the GPU and its low-profile heatsink sit under the DVD drive, and are given a very narrow channel for air to be pulled across the heatsink by the fans. When the GPU heats up enough, not only does it reflow the solder in the ball grid array slightly, it can cause the entire mainboard to flex - a phenomenon largely caused by the X-shaped brackets that hold the heatsinks on under the mainboard. They hold the heatsinks down to the chips with a tension fit that presses up directly underneath those chips.

So when the system gets too hot, the combination of loosened solder with a mainboard that flexes from heat causes the GPU or CPU to actually break its connection from the board - resulting in the 3 red lights and secondary error code 0102 (the “unknown hardware error” code).

This is true of ALL systems manufactured thus far, not just the launch systems. Hopefully, Microsoft’s new measure of adding a heatpipe to the GPU heatsink will reduce the heat on the mainboard itself enough to keep this from happening. We shall see."

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Microsoft faces class-action suit over Xbox 360

Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
(07/11/2007 6:00 AM EDT)

A Florida man has filed a $5 million federal class-action lawsuit against Microsoft this week, claiming the company is responsible for a defect in the Xbox 360 that scratches game discs and makes them unusable.
Jorge Brouwer of Broward County filed the suit Monday in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The suit was first reported on the gaming site Joystiq.

The suit claims that the Xbox 360 was "negligently designed and manufactured" in that the video-game console's laser disc reading assembly contacts and scratches discs. "The scratches to the game discs render them unreadable or otherwise inoperable," the suit says. Brouwer said the Xbox 360 he bought in November 2006 destroyed the Gears of War and Madden NFL '0" video-game discs he bought for $50 each.

Microsoft was not immediately available for comment.

The lawsuit was filed less than a week after Microsoft said it would set aside more than $1 billion to extend the warranty protection on the Xbox 360 to cover what the company called an "unacceptable" number of repairs to the consoles. The main problem was a defect that caused a general hardware failure. Microsoft said it would take a financial charge against pretax earnings of as much as $1.15 billion in the quarter ending June 30 to cover the cost of the extended warranty protection.

In his lawsuit, Brouwer claimed to have received thousands of complaints from U.S. Xbox users who have had game discs damaged. Microsoft has replaced some damaged disks at $20 each, provided the games were made by Microsoft, the suit said. "However, defendant has not replaced all of its titles that have been scratched and refused to replace or provide any compensation for any scratched game discs made by third-parties."

The suit alleges that the problem is not limited to the United States. A Dutch TV program, Kassa, received numerous complaints in February of disc-damaging Xbox consoles from customers in that country, the suit noted. Kassa investigated and later ran its own tests, which found that some Xbox 360s scratched game discs after five hours of playing.

Microsoft Netherlands, according to the suit, acknowledged that disc scratching was possible in some machines, and the company "would seek a solution for the Dutch customers with this problem."

The complaint also lists Microsoft's extended warranty plan as further proof of the Xbox's defective hardware. "At all times material to this complaint, the defendant had full knowledge that there are other numerous design defects with its Xbox 360 system and console, including the defective laser disc reading assembly," the complaint said.

In seeking damages, the suit alleges that Microsoft has breached its warranty to customers and is liable for damages caused by the consoles. The suit asks the court to order Microsoft to pay actual and consequential damages, including replacing damaged discs and repairing defective consoles. The Xbox costs as much a $479.

In December, the family of an Illinois infant who died in a house fire sued Microsoft, claiming the blaze was started by an Xbox that overheated.

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Apparently, all of the 11.6 million consoles reportedly sold by the end of June have this undisclosed issue, but Microsoft has taken the necessary steps to fix it.

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The complaint also lists Microsoft's extended warranty plan as further proof of the Xbox's defective hardware. "At all times material to this complaint, the defendant had full knowledge that there are other numerous design defects with its Xbox 360 system and console, including the defective laser disc reading assembly," the complaint said.

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In December, the family of an Illinois infant who died in a house fire sued Microsoft, claiming the blaze was started by an Xbox that overheated.

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